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August
8, 2005 
VOL.
43, NO. 14Oakland,
CA
Sister Helen
Prejean continues
campaign to end death penalty
Sister Helen Prejean, anti-death penalty advocate and
author, has taken her campaign to the highest levels, pleading for death
row inmates in conversation with a Supreme Court justice and writing directly
to Pope John Paul II.
The results have been mixed, she reported during presentations at a summer
institute, “Engaged Cosmology,” held at the Sophia Center
of Holy Names University in Oakland. Justice Scalia was friendly but refused
to budge from his position, while the pope read her letter word by word
and the Vatican later issued a new catechism consistent with her views.
Sister Prejean, whose first book, “Dead Man Walking,” has
evolved into a movie, an opera, and most recently into a stage play, does
not claim that her appeal made the difference in the Vatican decision
– the Holy See consulted widely on the issue - but she applauds
the change.
During an address, Sister Prejean said that Scalia was the deciding vote
in a 5- to 4 decision rejecting Virginia death row inmate Joseph O’Dell’s
request for DNA testing to prove his innocence in a rape-murder conviction.
O’Dell, one of the many death row inmates she has befriended, was
later executed.
This, and the fact the Scalia is a duck hunting buddy of her brother Louis
and fellow Catholic, was on her mind when she encountered Scalia in a
New Orleans airport. “Louis says they don’t talk ‘court
stuff’ when they’re out there in the duck blind. They just
hunt,” she told the 400-plus gathering of participants, who met
July 8-11 at Sophia’s annual summer institute.
Sister Prejean shared the speaker’s podium with Brian Swimme, Bay
Area mathematical cosmologist and a Christ the King, Pleasant Hill, parishioner;
Patricia Mische, director of peace studies at Antioch College in Ohio;
Father Diarmuid O’Murchu, Irish social psychologist and author of
“Catching Up with Jesus;” and Father Jim Conlon, director
of Sophia Center.
During the four-day institute, Sister Prejean, 66, displayed her gregarious
Molly Ivins-like homespun wit combined with the ability to put human faces
around “freeze-dried” legalism. She said Scalia was warm and
welcoming, although the two did not agree.
Sister Prejean introduced herself as Louis’ sister, told the judge
that she was writing a book (“The Death of Innocents”) about
two innocent men she accompanied to execution, and reminded him of remarks
he had made earlier at a Georgetown University student assembly.
In response to questions, Scalia had said that since recent Vatican teachings
on capital punishment were not issued “ex cathedra,” strictly
declared infallible, he had given them his “thoughtful consideration”
and rejected them. He added that he preferred the traditional view of
Augustine and Aquinas, which upheld capital punishment.
“I want you to know that I’m taking you on in this book,”
said Sister Prejean. He replied in “a friendly way, jabbing his
hand in the air: ‘And I’ll be coming right back at you.’”
Their airport meeting was a no-win for Sister Prejean. But not so in 1997,
when she wrote to Pope John Paul II about Joseph O’Dell. The Pontiff
had issued a statement in support of saving O’Dell’s life.
In her thank you letter to John Paul II, Sister Prejean demonstrated her
brand of southern Catholic chutzpah and daring. She challenged some of
his words in “Evangelium Vitae,” in which he upheld the state’s
right to execute in cases of “absolute necessity.”
She quoted opposing views from the revised Constitutional Court of South
Africa, which unconditionally forbids state executions, and from the UN
Declaration of Human Rights, “which states in clear, unequivocal
terms every human being’s inalienable right not to be killed nor
subjected to torture.”
“How can any government vulnerable to undue influence of the rich
and powerful and subject to every kind of prejudice, have the purity and
integrity to select certain of its citizens for punishment by death?”
she asked.
She reminded the pope that in the U.S. 85 percent of those on death row
have killed white people, but prosecutors seldom seek the death penalty
or even prosecute cases with vigor when the victim is a person of color.
And 50 percent of all homicides involve the deaths of minorities.
Sister Prejean told the pope that she prayed for the day when “Catholic
opposition to government executions will be unequivocal.” During
a visit to Rome shortly afterwards, a papal aide told her that that “the
Holy Father read your letter. He read every word.”
A week later, on Jan. 29, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict
XVI, announced that a change would be made in the Catechism to reflect
recent “progress in the doctrine about the death penalty.”
The new version now says that no matter how grave the crime, the death
penalty is not to be imposed. The “extreme gravity” of a crime
no longer serves as a qualifying criterion for governments to invoke when
they want to execute their citizens, said Sister Prejean. The Catechism
now states that there can be no taking of life, whether the person is
innocent or guilty.
But Sister Prejean plays down her personal involvement, saying that her
letter was only a small portion of the dialogue about the death penalty
taking place across the Church. From 1972 to 1998, the U.S. Catholic bishops
either individually or in conferences issued over 130 statements against
the death penalty.
She said, “I laid the suffering of people affected by the death
penalty in the pope’s lap and his compassionate heart responded.
Personal experience has a way of turning absolute-sounding moral formulas
on their heads.”
In the past few years, her own perspective about life issues has broadened
to include the entire planet.
After meeting Oldenberg Franciscan Sister Marya Grathwohl at a conference
and listening to stories about her work among the northern Montana Cheyenne
tribe, Sister Prejean visited the reservation. Now she returns there each
summer to rest and write and to participate in Native American rituals.
The Cheyenne “kneel down to touch the earth,” Sister Prejean
said, “and then bring the energy of it up through their legs and
arms to their hearts to remind themselves that each human lives in all
beings, and all beings live in humans.”
“I can’t help but think how different the U.S. justice system
would be if judges started each day with these spiritual exercises,”
she said.
Sister Helen Prejean
